Jonathan reveals Gov. Shettima’s involvement in Chibok girls’ kidnap

The immediate past President, Goodluck Jonathan has said that a book written by his former Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi , is a mere gossip and full of lies.

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He also explain Governor Kashim Shettima’s role in the abduction of over 200 girl from Chibok Secondary School in Borno State.

Abdullahi’s book, entitled, “On a Platter of Gold — How Jonathan won and lost Nigeria,” was launched in Abuja on Thursday.

The Governor of Borno State, Shettima, had during the book launch described the former President as a bad leader who made poor choices while in power.

Responding through a statement signed by his media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, in Abuja on Friday, the former President described Shettima’s claims as parochial and jaundiced.

The statement challenged the governor to come clean about the roles he allegedly played in the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls, saying that went beyond the dismissive claim that “Jonathan thought I kidnapped Chibok girls.”

He also accused Shettima of frustrating the war against Boko Haram.

The statement read in part, “He [Shettima] should be able to tell us if it was Jonathan’s poor choices that led the governor to expose the students of the Government Girls’ Secondary School in Chibok to an avoidable danger, in total disregard of a Federal Government’s directive to the governors in the three states most affected by Boko Haram to relocate their students writing the West African Senior School Certificate Examination to safe zones.

“The governor is now denying that he had no hand in the kidnap of the Chibok girls even before anybody accused him of culpability.

“However, we share the view of those who insist that the governor had other things up his sleeve when he promised the West African Examinations Council that he would secure the girls and ended up doing the very opposite, by deliberately abandoning them to their fate , without any security presence in their school.

“Should we also fail to point out that his decision to reward the principal of Chibok Secondary School, who was uncharacteristically absent on the night the terrorists stormed the school, with the post of a commissioner, did throw up more questions than answers?”

“As a man who had never seen anything good in the administration of Jonathan on account of party and other differences , it has remained our consistent view that in a democracy, Governor Kashim Shettima and others like him are entitled to their opinion, no matter how jaundiced .

“However , it is a sad commentary on the character of some of our politicians that they go to any length to make spurious statements in pursuit of the sad narrative to remain politically correct.

“We cannot be deceived by his crocodile tears and patronising claim that ‘Jonathan is essentially a decent man ,’ which is a ploy he deployed to justify his false allegation of a lost glory.

“The man who today speaks of squandered goodwill should be able to tell Nigerians what percentage of the votes Jonathan got in 2011 from Borno State at the height of that his envisaged glory , according to Shettima, and what it became in subsequent elections .

“What was obvious yesterday and has remained today is that Governor Shettima and those who think like him never liked Jonathan based on some parochial and paternalistic sentiments.”

The statement added that the former said that the Jonathan government assembled a “yet- to – be- matched crop of dynamic cabinet and economic management team made up of tested technocrats like Dr . Ngozi Okonjo – Iweala (former Minister of Finance), Dr . Shamsuddeen Usman (former Minister of National Planning), Mr. Olusegun Aganga (former Minister of Trade and Investments) and Dr . Akinwumi Adesina (President of the African Development Bank and former Minister of Agriculture)